War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
Drug War Negative
Drug War Negative ........................................................................................................................................... 1
Summary ....................................................................................................................................................... 2
Glossary ........................................................................................................................................................ 3
Inherency Answers........................................................................................................................................ 4
Harms Answers – Impact Turns ................................................................................................................. 12
Solvency Answers ....................................................................................................................................... 13
K Advantage Answers – Utilitarianism Framework ................................................................................... 20
1NC Decriminalization Counterplan (1NC) (JV & V) ............................................................................... 23
CP Solvency Extension – Policing (JV & V) ............................................................................................. 24
CP Answers to: Links to the Net Benefit (JV&V) ...................................................................................... 29
CP Answers to: Policing Continues (JV & V) ............................................................................................ 32
CP Answers to: Federal Action Key (JV & V) ........................................................................................... 33
CP Answers to: Increases Use (JV & V) .................................................................................................... 34
Drug Surveillance Reform Kritik 1NC (1/2) (V Only) ............................................................................... 35
K Ext - Answer to: Mass Incarceration Now (V) ....................................................................................... 37
K Ext - Answer to: Piece Meal Reforms needed (V).................................................................................. 38
K Ext - Answers to: public supports surv. – WoD (V) ............................................................................... 40
K Ext - Answers to: No Alternative to the WoD (V) ................................................................................. 41
K Ext - Answers to: Ending the WoD is a 1st step (V) ............................................................................... 42
K Ext - Answers to: End WoD and do Alt (Perm) (V) ............................................................................... 43
K Ext - Answers to: Reform Impact is Worth It (V) .................................................................................. 44
K Ext - Solvency Extension – State Cooption (V only) ............................................................................. 45
1
War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
Summary
There are 3 main strategies to answer the war on drugs affirmative:
The first strategy is topicality, which argues that the phrase “domestic surveillance” in the resolution ought
to be interpreted as only referring to government surveillance in the context of terrorist organizations like Al
Qaeda. If we allow domestic surveillance to refer to anything the government does to monitor things, that
can lead to affirmatives that end government surveillance of library systems and other small affirmatives
that are unpredictable for the negative team to research.
The second strategy is the states decriminalization counterplan – it argues that the states should end criminal
penalties for prohibited drugs at the state level. This keeps drugs like marijuana, cocaine, and heroin on the
books as illegal and allows the federal government to continue to pursue cartels but prevents local law
enforcement from arresting people because the use of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, etc. is no longer a crime.
This solves the affirmative’s harms about policing communities of color and the net benefit is the organized
crime disadvantage from the other file.
The third strategy is the drug surveillance reform criticism – this argues that locating the problem of mass
incarceration and racism in the war on drugs is a misdiagnosis that can be particularly harmful. First, less
than 25% of people incarcerated are there because of drug crimes and second, the war on drugs isn’t the
source of racism, it is flawed public consciousness and racist ideology that is responsible for violence
against communities of color.
Ending the war on drugs and relying on the law to correct these injustices creates a flawed belief that
progress has been made but allows racism to be pushed underground and emerge in new, insidious forms. In
other words, unless we change the fact that racism is still deeply embedded in society, racism will not end,
no matter how much legal change or administrative tinkering occurs. The alternative advocates for a shift in
public consciousness in an attempt to change peoples’ racist beliefs and then positive change can follow
after that.
Some important case arguments are that the affirmative doesn’t end all instances of institutional racism or
surveillance, therefore other surveillance tools will continue to police communities of color. Another
important case argument is that many efforts to end the war on drugs are occurring in the status quo.
Marijuana is being legalized and decriminalized on mass scale which is a large tool used to police
communities of color.
2
War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
Glossary
Decriminalization- the abolition of criminal penalties in relation to certain acts, perhaps retroactively,
though perhaps regulated permits or fines might still apply, as opposed to legalization
Topicality- debate argument that the contends the affirmative should lose because the case presented is not
an example of the resolution
Utilitarianism- is a theory in normative ethics holding that the best moral action is the one that maximizes
utility. Utility is defined in various ways, but is usually related to the well-being of sentient entities.
3
War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
Inherency Answers
(___) The status quo solves – the federal government is curbing the war on drugs and states
are changing drug policies
Desilver 2014—correspondent at the Pew Research Center, “Feds may be rethinking the drug war, but
states have been leading the way” April 2, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/02/feds-may-berethinking-the-drug-war-but-states-have-been-leading-the-way/
Attorney General Eric Holder recently called for reduced sentences for low-level drug offenders in
federal cases, with the aim of reducing the growth of the federal prisoner population. (About half of
the nearly 200,000 federal inmates have been convicted of a drug offense.) Earlier, he said low-level
drug offenders wouldn’t automatically be charged with offenses that carried strict mandatory minimum
sentences, and gave Washington and Colorado the go-ahead to implement marijuana-legalization initiatives.
This month, the U.S. Sentencing Commission is expected to vote on a set of amendments to the sentencing
guidelines used by federal judges. The interest in sentencing reform now spans Washington D.C.’s
normal partisan and ideological battle lines. The Smarter Sentencing Act of 2014, now pending before
the Senate, would cut mandatory minimums for a host of federal drug crimes. Its sponsors include
Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, liberal Democrats Patrick Leahy and Sheldon Whitehouse, Maine
independent Angus King, and libertarian Republicans Rand Paul and Mike Lee.The federal moves come
after years of similar changes at the state level. Between 2009 and 2013, 40 states took some action to
ease their drug laws, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of legislative data provided by the
National Conference of State Legislatures and the Vera Institute of Justice. Twenty-seven states moved
only in the direction of easing, while 13 other states eased some laws and toughened others — often as
part of a broader rethink of their drug policies. State-level actions have included lowering penalties
for possession and use of illegal drugs, shortening mandatory minimums or curbing their
applicability, removing automatic sentence enhancements, and establishing or extending the
jurisdiction of drug courts and other alternatives to the regular criminal justice system. Some have
been minor tweaks, such as Idaho’s 2011 change that allowed people convicted of violent felonies to
participate in drug courts under certain circumstances. Other states have taken very different approaches
to drugs: New York, for instance, moved away from its harsh Rockefeller-era drug laws in 2009. Last
year, Vermont decriminalized possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, while Oregon (where
possession of less than an ounce has been a noncriminal violation since 1973) made possession of more
than an ounce a misdemeanor rather than a felony. All told, 16 states have passed laws
decriminalizing marijuana; Maryland, which reduced penalties for marijuana possession and use in
2012, is now considering decriminalization legislation. State-level policy changes may not get the
attention of federal moves, but they can affect many more people. State prisons house more than six
times as many prisoners as federal prisons — more than 1.35 million in 2012, according to the Bureau
of Justice Statistics. And for 16.6% of all state prisoners, a drug crime is their most serious offense
(down from 20% in 2006).
4
War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
Inherency Answers
(___) Marijuana legalization is happening now which decreases policing of minority
communities
Cooper 2015—Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at The Week, “The Beginning of the end of the
war on drugs” March 30 http://theweek.com/articles/546750/beginning-end-war-drugs
Something similar might be happening with the War on Drugs. Though the change has been longer in
coming, and like gay rights the battle is far from over, there are some recent developments that would be
absolutely incomprehensible to a time traveler from 2004. And I'm not just talking about marijuana.
No, this is news about hard drugs in conservative states. In Kentucky, the legislature passed a
bipartisan bill advancing a harm-reduction approach towards heroin addiction, while in Indiana,
Republican Gov. Mike Pence authorized a needle-exchange program in response to an outbreak of
HIV. The experiments with full marijuana legalization in Colorado, Washington, D.C., and
Washington state are vital and long-overdue measures. But marijuana poses relatively simple political
and policy challenges, since as a drug it is relatively harmless and now widely known to be so. Harder
drugs like heroin, meth, and cocaine, by contrast, are much more dangerous and addictive, and thus pose
more difficult political and policy questions. On the other hand, hard drugs are also behind the very
worst part of the War on Drugs — the gruesome violence it foments in Latin America, where gangs
massacre each other and everyone else over the ability to sell drugs to Americans. Reforming drug policy
has the potential to make the world a dramatically better place.
5
War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
Extensions: Current Reforms Solve (1/3)
(___)
(___) Specifically, the DEA has changed its policy on profiling
Barrett 2014—Devlin Barrett is from the Wall Street Journal, December 8, “Justice Department Issues
New Guidelines Barring Racial Profiling by Federal Agents” http://www.wsj.com/articles/justicedepartment-to-issue-new-guidelines-barring-racial-profiling-by-federal-agents-1418036401
Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday laid out new guidelines against racial and other types of
profiling, citing law-enforcement cases that have sparked protests even as the new federal policy
wouldn’t affect local police. The federal government since 2003 has banned profiling on the basis of
race or ethnicity, though it has made an exception for national-security investigations. The new policy also
will bar profiling on the basis of religion, gender, national origin, sexual orientation or gender
identity, according to officials.
6
War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
Extensions: Current Reforms Solve (2/3)
(___) Current movements exist in the status quo that lead to the reforms the affirmatives
main author, Michelle Alexander, is advocating for
Kilgore, Professor at the University of Illinois, 2014
(James, “Mass Incarceration: Examining and Moving Beyond the New Jim Crow”, Crit Sociology March 18
2014, http://crs.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/03/18/0896920513509821)
In The New Jim Crow, Alexander argues that mass incarceration cannot be reversed by piecemeal reforms
or ‘isolated victories in legislatures or courtrooms’ (2010: 218). She presses for the creation of a social
movement on the scale of the civil rights mobilization of the ’60s to take on this task. However, her book
offers little detail about the process for building such a movement. Since that time, she has offered a few
more clues on this issue which I will address below. However, by unpadcking some of the class, race and
gender dimensions of mass incarceration noted above, a number of observations surface about such a
movement. First of all, embryonic forms of this social movement already exist in the self-organization
of formerly incarcerated people, in the massive mobilizations against harsh immigration laws, and in
the wide array of non-profits, churches and community organizations involved in lobbying and
advocacy work on issues such as sentencing laws, isolation cells, the War on Drugs, racial profil ing,
halting the spred of private prisons, re-entry, opposing criminal background checks by employers, and
other concerns. An effective social movement would need to bring these groupings together and add
others which seem to have an interest in opposing mass incarceration but have thus far remained on the
sidelines. Key to creating a viable movement would be the participation of the incarcerated, the
formerly incarcerated and their families and communities. Some moves in this direction have already
taken place with the formation of organizations in various parts of the country such as All of Us or
None, The Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted Peoples’ Movement, the Fortune Society, A New
Way of Life, the Formerly Convicted Citizens Project, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children,
Families Against Mandatory Minimums and Citizens with Conviction. Moreover, for the first time in a
long while, major strike action has occurred in several prisons highlighted by the work stoppage in four
Georgia prisons in 2010 (Hing, 2010) and the 2011 hunger strike in the Pelican Bay SHU and other
California penitentiaries (Lovett, 2011). However, to expand the base for such a movement would
necessitate making an ideological link between mass incarceration and the general shifts toward
inequality and cutbacks in state social services. A concrete example of this approach is the Boston
Workers’ Alliance, an organization of unemployed workers who operate under the slogan ‘Fighting
for Job and CORI (Criminal Offender Record Information) Reform’. While combatting joblessness is their
main objective, they clearly see the link between mass incarceration and unemployment. As a result, one of
their main cam paigns was to pressure Massachusetts to pass a ‘Ban the Box’ law outlawing the use of
questions on employment applications about an applicant’s criminal background. Massachusetts is one of
only a handful of states with such legislation. The United Workers’ Organization, a national forma tion of
excluded workers, follows a similar track, including the ‘formerly incarcerated’ as one of the seven sectors
which they organize (Excluded Workers’ Congress, 2011). In the same vein,
7
War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
Extensions: Current Reforms Solve (3/3)
(___) Current movements exist to reform the criminal justice system
DAVIS & GONZÁLEZ 2014 Juan, Democracy Now, Angela Davis on Prison Abolition, the War on
Drugs and Why Social Movements Shouldn’t Wait on Obama, 3-6,
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/3/6/angela_davis_on_prison_abolition_the#
The struggle to overhaul the criminal justice system in the United States has reached a pivotal
moment. From the Obama administration’s push to reform harsh and racially biased sentencing for
drug offenses to the recent decision by New York state to reform its use of solitary confinement, there
is a growing momentum toward rethinking the system. But new battles have also emerged, like the fight
over Stand Your Ground laws in states like Florida, where a number of recent court cases have
highlighted the issue of racial bias in the court system. Marissa Alexander, an African-American woman
of color who fired what she says was a warning shot into a wall near her abusive husband, is facing up to 60
years in prison at her retrial. Michael Dunn, who shot and killed an African-American teenager in a dispute
over loud music in the same state of Florida, is facing a minimum of 60 years for attempted murder, but the
jury failed to convict him of the central charge in the case: the murder of Jordan Davis, a case that, for
many, recalled the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman. AMY GOODMAN: To talk more
about these issues, we spend the rest of the hour with the world-renowned author, activist, scholar, Angela
Davis, professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz. For over four decades, she has been
one of the most influential activists and intellectuals in the United States. She’s speaking here in New York
on Friday at the Beyond the Bars conference up at Columbia University. It’s great to have you here, Angela.
ANGELA DAVIS: Thank you, Amy. Thank you. Thank you, Juan. AMY GOODMAN: Do you sense
progress? ANGELA DAVIS: Well, yes. I think that this is a pivotal moment. There are openings. And I
think it’s very important to point out that people have been struggling over these issues for years and for
decades.
8
War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
Extensions: Marijuana Legalization Solves (1/2)
(___)
(___) Marijuana legalization occurring in the status quo diminishes police profiling and
militarization
Sibilla, 14 [04/02/14, Nick Sibilla is a writer for the Institute for Justice., “The Shame of “Equitable
Sharing””,
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/04/equitable_sharing_legalized_mariju
ana_and_civil_forfeiture_the_scheme_that.html]
Legalization now threatens that forfeiture revenue for the police departments that have relied on it.
Legal cannabis and the subsequent drop in forfeiture have already caused one drug task force in
Washington to cut its budget by 15 percent. That’s great news for due process and property rights. But
marijuana is still illegal under federal law, so local legalization has created ambiguity in civil
forfeiture proceedings. Even in states where recreational or medical marijuana is legal, property
owned by innocent people is still at risk thanks to “equitable sharing.” This federal program lets local
and state law enforcement do an end run around state law and profit from civil forfeiture, simply by
collaborating with a federal agency. Equitable sharing is a two-way street: For the federal government to
“adopt” a forfeiture case, cops can approach the feds and vice versa. The U.S. Department of Justice has
applications online for agencies to apply for adoption and to transfer federally forfeited property.
Crucially, criminal charges do not have to accompany a civil forfeiture case. The proceeds from
federal forfeitures are deposited into the DOJ’s Asset Forfeiture Fund. After the DOJ determines the
size of the cut for the feds, equitable sharing allows the local police to take up to 80 percent of what the
property is worth. In fiscal year 2012, the federal government paid out almost $700 million in equitable
sharing proceeds to local and state law enforcement agencies. Equitable sharing tempts cops to become
bounty hunters, even in states with legal marijuana. Tony Jalali is living proof of this travesty. Jalali
almost lost his business over four grams of marijuana. After immigrating to the United States from Iran in
1978, Jalali became a successful small business owner
9
War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
Extensions: Marijuana Legalization Solves (2/2)
(___) Marijuana legalization has tangible effects for communities of color
Franklin, 14 [Neil, Executive Director of Law, Enforcement Against Prohibition, "3 Reasons Marijuana
Legalization in Colorado Is Good for People for Color", 1/23, www.huffingtonpost.com/neillfranklin/marijuana-legalization-race-racism-minorities_b_4651456.html]
Here are three concrete ways that Colorado's law is good for people of color. 1. The new law means
there will be no more arrests for marijuana possession in Colorado. Under Colorado's new law, residents
21 or older can produce, possess, use and sell up to an ounce of marijuana at a time. This change will have
a real and measurable impact on people of color in Colorado, where the racial disparities in
marijuana possession arrests have been reprehensible. In the last ten years, Colorado police arrested
blacks for marijuana possession at more than three times the rate they arrested whites, even though whites
used marijuana at higher rates. As noted by the NAACP in its endorsement of the legalization law, it's
particularly bad in Denver, where almost one-third of the people arrested for private adult possession
marijuana are black, though they make up only 11% of the population. These arrests can have devastating
and long-lasting consequences. An arrest record can affect the ability to get a job, housing, student loans
and public benefits. As law professor Michelle Alexander describes, people (largely black and brown)
who acquire a criminal record simply for being caught with marijuana are relegated to a permanent
second-class status. When we make marijuana legal, we stop those arrests from happening.
10
War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Marijuana Legalization Isn’t Inevitable
(___)
(___) Marijuana legalization is coming now
Wyatt 2014—Kristen Wyatt is from the Associated Press, April 2, “Poll: Marijuana legalization
inevitable”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/02/poll-marijuana-legalization-inevitable/7210215/
Marijuana legalization in the U.S. seems inevitable to three-fourths of Americans, whether they
support it or not, according to a new poll out Wednesday. The Pew Research Center survey on the
nation's shifting attitudes about drug policy also showed increased support for moving away from
mandatory sentences for non-violent drug offenders. The telephone survey found that 75 percent of
respondents — including majorities of both supporters and opponents of legal marijuana— think that
the sale and use of pot eventually will be legal nationwide. It was the first time that question had been
asked.
11
War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
Harms Answers – Impact Turns
(___) Most people behind bars in the War on Drugs were distributing or using hard drugs.
These crimes harm communities and offenders should be punished.
Caulkins and Sevigny 2009 - Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz School of Public Policy AND
Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh (July 31, Jonathan P. and Eric
L., “How Many People Does the US Imprison for Drug Use, and Who Are They? ”
http://ibhinc.org/pdfs/CaulkinsSevignyHowanydoestheUSimprison2005.pdf)
The vast majority (85%) of the 274,324 people in prison in the U.S. in 1997 for drug-law violations were
clearly involved in drug distribution in one way or another. Many of the remaining 15% (41,047) had at
least some suggestion of possible current or past involvement in distribution. The precise proportion of
drug offenders in prison solely because they used drugs is thus hard to pin down, but appears to be
somewhere in the range of 2%-15%, representing 5,380 to 41,047 individuals. Furthermore, only about
one- third of the 41,047 individuals were in prison as new court commitments; most were already on parole
or probation before the infraction that led to their current incarceration. Almost half had a current
nondrug infraction that may have contributed to their incarceration. Even taking the upper bound
figure of 15%, the number of people in prison for their drug use is far lower than would be implied by
naively assuming that everyone convicted of drug possession was not involved in distribution.
Incarceration for drug use/possession thus appears to be a very modest contributor (0.5%-3.6%) to
the total sentenced U.S. prison population (1,137,210 in 1997). One reason is that the expected time
served by these individuals is about half that for those who were clearly involved in drug distribution. It is
also worth noting that 50-80% of arrestees test positive for some illicit drug and -15% of drug arrests
are for possession (Maguire and Pastore, 1997), so presumably if the criminal justice system wanted to
incarcerate many more drug users, that would be possible. Among those in prison for drug use,
almost 90% were involved with cocaine, heroin, and/or (meth)amphetamines. Just 5-7% possessed
only marijuana. Hence, the number of marijuana users in prison for their use is perhaps 800-2,300
individuals or on the order of 0.1-0.2% of all prison inmates. This figure is roughly consistent with
ONDCP (2005) and is well below Thomas' (1999) estimate of 9,700 based on the same survey because
Thomas assumes that all inmates convicted of possession were not involved in trafficking. An implication of
the new figure is that marijuana decriminalization would have almost no impact on prison populations,
although it might well have a bigger effect on other components of the criminal justice system.
12
War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
Solvency Answers
(___) Police forces will continue to find ways to criminalize communities of color
Burns, editor at the Times, 2014 (Rebecca, Associate Editor at In These Times, “The Unbearable
Whiteness of Marijuana Legalization”, [SG])
One worry has been that the high price of legalized marijuana will encourage a black market and that arrests
for illegal distribution could actually increase. Mariame Kaba: I’m very concerned about how this is
going to play out on the ground. Young people who are selling drugs because they have no other job
opportunities are definitively not going to be able to participate in the formal economy through the
dispensaries. Is law enforcement going to go after those young people 20 times harder now? AW: Yes, I
am concerned that distribution charges will increase. Whenever you make change, especially against
law enforcement’s status quo, it often finds a way to circumvent that change and maintain its budget.
But we haven’t seen anything that will lead us to believe that is taking place right now. And you have to
realize that these new marijuana laws are part of a much broader reform movement: Colorado has also been
revising its criminal justice laws. The first thing we did once Amendment 64 passed [in Colorado] was to
lower criminal penalties for those [between the ages of] 18 and 20 possessing marijuana. So we are already
working on preempting any type of net-widening. ITT: What impact will marijuana legalization have on the
War on Drugs as a whole? David J. Leonard: Any changes in the War on Drugs will require continued
organizing and agitation, because history has shown that one step forward has also resulted in two
steps back [for] communities of color. New York decriminalized marijuana in 1977. That clearly did not
lead to the end of the War on Drugs in New York, or lessen its effects on communities of color. Instead, the
way the law was written provided the foundation for stop-and-frisk, because the law made it a
misdemeanor for marijuana to be in public view, which basically fostered incentives to stop blacks
and Latinos and tell them to empty their pockets. So I have a number of concerns about the impact of
these reforms on the War on Drugs. To give just one other example: Does decriminalization apply to those
who are on probation and being drug-tested? MK: Another concern is whether, as the prices of marijuana
start climbing [because of legalization] and [poor] people turn to using other kinds of drugs, those
drugs then get painted as the worst possible drugs on the planet. The people who are doing the
“worst” drugs somehow always happen to be the most marginalized people within our culture. That’s
why it’s so important that we focus on uprooting the whole architecture of the War on Drugs. If we’re
not talking about the root issues of racism and classism, there are bound to be unintended
consequences.
13
War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
Solvency Answers - Racism
(___) Policing and racism are too entrenched
Kundnani and Kumar 2015—Arun Kundnani teaches at New York University and Deepa Kumar is an
associate professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers University “Race, surveillance, and
empire” in International Socialist Review http://isreview.org/issue/96/race-surveillance-and-empire
In what follows, we argue that the debate on national security surveillance that has emerged in the United
States since the summer of 2013 is woefully inadequate, due to its failure to place questions of race and
empire at the center of its analysis. It is racist ideas that form the basis for the ways national security
surveillance is organized and deployed, racist fears that are whipped up to legitimize this surveillance
to the American public, and the disproportionately targeted racialized groups that have been most
effective in making sense of it and organizing opposition. This is as true today as it has been
historically: race and state surveillance are intertwined in the history of US capitalism. Likewise, we
argue that the history of national security surveillance in the United States is inseparable from the history of
US colonialism and empire.
(___) Stopping the drug war does very little to spillover and cause larger movements against
the prison industrial complex
Ball, 2012 Jared, “WHY SOME LIKE THE NEW JIM CROW SO MUCH by Greg Thomas,”
http://imixwhatilike.org/2012/04/26/whysomelikethenewjimcrowsomuch/, Vitz
It should be no surprise that the political action proposed in The New Jim Crow is pitched as a plea
for “love,” Christian love, and of course “forgiveness.” In closing, “crazy” and “absurd” “activists” in the
distance, this law professor comes to speak the language of “movement,” but only to ask for a “new
civil rights movement” (223), in spite of the gross limitations of such liberal reformism and her
unrelenting avoidance of every other kind of movement in recent history, nationally and internationally.
This is the classic sado-masochistic attachment to white racist Americanism of the Negro or “AfricanAmerican” elite, the Black “lumpen-bourgeoisie.” The absence of any critical class analysis in
Alexander is a reflection of this uncritical paradigm of “civil-rights” reformism, a class-specific
liberalism of U.S. settler nationalism in a scorch-and-burn age of U.S. imperialism worldwide.¶ Her
last chapter is entitled “The Fire This Time.” The only James Baldwin in The New Jim Crow is the one
attached to the old “civil rights movement.” It is never the one who said the term “civil rights movement” is
“an American phrase which … upon examination means nothing at all”; or the one who wrote No Name in
the Street (1972) and The Evidence of Things Not Seen (1985); or the one who said in the midst of the
Black Power Movement that he had formerly been “the Great Black Hope of the Great White Father.” As an
‘exile’ or ‘expatriate,’ he represented hard and long for George Lester Jackson and the Black Panther Party
at large. Nonetheless, politically selective and cliché,
14
War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
Solvency Extensions: Non-Drug Surveillance Remains
(___)
(___) The affirmative only removes a tool for police to pursue the war on drugs without
removing the financial incentives. Police will continue to harmful policies against communities
of color, just with less information.
Lopez, writer at VOX, 2015
(German, “How does the US enforce the war on drugs??”, 7-15 http://www.vox.com/cards/war-on-drugsmarijuana-cocaine-heroin-meth/war-on-drugs-enforcement-america)
On the domestic front, the federal government supplies local and state police departments with funds, legal
flexibility, and special equipment to crack down on illicit drugs. Local and state police then use this funding
to go after drug-dealing organizations."[Federal] assistance helped us take out major drug organizations, and
we took out a number of them in Baltimore," said Neill Franklin, a retired police major and executive
director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which opposes the war on drugs. "But to do that, we took
out the low-hanging fruit to work up the chain to find who was at the top of the pyramid. It started with lowlevel drug dealers, working our way up to midlevel management, all the way up to the kingpins."Some of
the funding, particularly from the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant program, encourages local and state police
to participate in anti-drug operations. If police don't use the money to go after illicit substances, they risk
losing it — providing a financial incentive for cops to continue the war on drugs.
15
War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
Solvency Extensions: Non-Drug Surveillance Remains
(___) Marijuana legalization only eliminates one instance, policing and control of communities of
color will continue.
Enojado ’13 (Opaque Critical Theorist, “Three Good Reasons Why People of Color Should Question the
Drug Legalization Movement”, [SG])
There are three good reasons for people of color to question the drug legalization movement.
1.) Drug legalization does not change the nature of policing. As tom dispatch and many others
acknowledge, there are problems with budgets and prisons. No one disputes this issue. A pathological
obsession with mandating long sentences and death penalties in the U.S. has reached unmanageable
proportions. Everything from the law of parties to legalized brutality such as castration shore up the
public’s basest desires for justice at any cost. For people of color, however, the issue is not merely outof-control drug policy, but a racist criminal justice system few are simply willing to say is racist and
needs immediate redress. The drug legalization movement, for people of color, represents a classic
quandary as far as long term political strategy: focusing on dealing with symptoms of a problem
rather than taking on the problem (in this case, white racism and, more broadly, white supremacy
and neocolonialism) directly. Most of these good, sincere efforts are not grounded in history, or
(___) Communities of color are also surveilled through social services
Eubanks 2014—Virginia Eubanks teaches in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies
at the University at Albany, SUNY, and is a fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of Government, January 15,
“Want to Predict the Future of Surveillance? Ask Poor Communities.” https://prospect.org/article/wantpredict-future-surveillance-ask-poor-communities
But I wasn’t surprised. A decade ago, I sat talking to a young mother on welfare about her experiences
with technology. When our conversation turned to Electronic Benefit Transfer cards (EBT), Dorothy*
said, “They’re great. Except [Social Services] uses them as a tracking device.” I must have looked
shocked, because she explained that her caseworker routinely looked at her EBT purchase records.
Poor women are the test subjects for surveillance technology, Dorothy told me ruefully, and you
should pay attention to what happens to us. You’re next.
16
War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
Solvency Answers – Incarceration/Racism
(___) The War on Drugs is woefully insufficient and ineffective at addressing mass
incarceration – the aff does very little to address systemic racism
Forman 2012 James Jr, Clinical Professor of Law, Yale Law School. Faculty Scholarship Series. Paper
3599. "RACIAL CRITIQUES OF MASS INCARCERATION: BEYOND THE NEW JIM CROW" April,
http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/3599
To this point, I have focused principally on crimes of violence and the state’s response to such crimes. I part
company with the New Jim Crow writers in this regard. They focus almost exclusively on the War on
Drugs. This approach made sense for early ACLU advocates such as Glasser and Boyd, whose only
objective was to curtail the drug war.88 It makes less sense for more recent proponents of the analogy,
who attack the broader phenomenon of mass incarceration but restrict their attention to punishments
for drug offenders.89 Other crimes—especially violent crimes—are rarely mentioned.90 The choice to
focus on drug crimes is a natural—even necessary— byproduct of framing mass incarceration as a
new form of Jim Crow.91 One of Jim Crow’s defining features was that it treated similarly situated blacks
and whites differently. For writers seeking analogues in today’s criminal justice system, drug arrests and
prosecutions provide natural targets, along with racial profiling in traffic stops. Blacks and whites use drugs
at roughly the same rates, but African Americans are significantly more likely to be arrested and imprisoned
for drug crimes.92 As with Jim Crow, the difference lies in government practice, not in the underlying
behavior. The statistics on selling drugs are less clear-cut, but here too the racial disparities in arrest and
incarceration rates exceed any disparities that might exist in the race of drug sellers.93 But violent crime is a
different matter. While rates of drug offenses are roughly the same throughout the population, blacks
are overrepresented among the population for violent offenses. For example, the African American
arrest rate for murder is seven to eight times higher than the white arrest rate; the black arrest rate
for robbery is ten times higher than the white arrest rate.94 Murder and robbery are the two offenses for
which the arrest data are considered most reliable as an indicator of offending.95 In making this point, I do
not mean to suggest that discrimination in the criminal justice system is no longer a concern. There is
overwhelming evidence that discriminatory practices in drug law enforcement contribute to racial disparities
in arrests and prosecutions, and even for violent offenses there remain unexplained disparities between
arrest rates and incarceration rates.96 Instead, I make the point to highlight the problem with framing mass
incarceration as a new form of Jim Crow. Because the analogy leads proponents to search for disparities
in the criminal justice system that resemble those of the Old Jim Crow, they confine their attention to
cases where blacks are like whites in all relevant respects, yet are treated worse by law. Such a search
usefully exposes the abuses associated with racial profiling and the drug war. But it does not lead to a
comprehensive understanding of mass incarceration. Does it matter that the Jim Crow analogy diverts
our attention from violent crime and the state’s response to it, if it gives us tools needed to criticize the
War on Drugs? I think it does, because contrary to the impression left by many of mass incarceration’s
critics, the majority of America’s prisoners are not locked up for drug offenses.
17
War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
18
War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
19
War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
K Advantage Answers – Utilitarianism Framework
(___) Utilitarianism and consequences ought to come first – the only ethical option is to save
the most lives
Isaac 2 — Jeffrey C. Isaac, James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for the
Study of Democracy and Public Life at Indiana University-Bloomington, 2002 (“Ends, Means, and
Politics,” Dissent, Volume 49, Issue 2, Spring, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via EBSCOhost,
p. 35-36)
As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught, an
unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility. The concern may be
morally laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to
see that the purity of one’s intention does not ensure the achievement of what one intends. Abjuring
violence or refusing to make common cause with morally compromised parties may seem like the
right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence, then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good
beyond the clean conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and
injustice, moral purity is not simply a form of powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in
injustice. [end page 35] This is why, from the standpoint of politics—as opposed to religion—pacifism is
always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating violence, it refuses in principle to oppose
certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3) it fails to see that politics is as much about unintended
consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects of action, rather than the motives of action, that
is most significant. Just as the alignment with “good” may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit
of “good” that generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough
that one’s goals be sincere or idealistic; it is equally important, always, to ask about the effects of
pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and historically contextualized ways.
Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment. It alienates those who are not true believers. It promotes
arrogance. And it undermines political effectiveness.
20
War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
Extensions: Utilitarianism
(___) Death is the only irreversible impact – quality of life is subjective and reversible but the
judge should prioritize the existence of bodies first
Tännsjö, rofessor of Practical Philosophy at Stockholm University, 2011
(Torbjörn, “Shalt Thou Sometimes Murder? On the Ethics of Killing,” online: http://people.su.se/~jolso/HStexter/shaltthou.pdf)
I suppose it is correct to say that, if Schopenhauer is right, if life is never worth living, then according to
utilitarianism we should all commit suicide and put an end to humanity. But this does not mean that,
each of us should commit suicide. I commented on this in chapter two when I presented the idea that
utilitarianism should be applied, not only to individual actions, but to collective actions as well.¶ It is a
well-known fact that people rarely commit suicide. Some even claim that no one who is mentally sound
commits suicide. Could that be taken as evidence for the claim that people live lives worth living? That
would be rash. Many people are not utilitarians. They may avoid suicide because they believe that it is
morally wrong to kill oneself. It is also a possibility that, even if people lead lives not worth living, they
believe they do. And even if some may believe that their lives, up to now, have not been worth living,
their future lives will be better. They may be mistaken about this. They may hold false expectations about
the future.¶ From the point of view of evolutionary biology, it is natural to assume that people should rarely
commit suicide. If we set old age to one side, it has poor survival value (of one’s genes) to kill oneself. So it
should be expected that it is difficult for ordinary people to kill themselves. But then theories about
cognitive dissonance, known from psychology, should warn us that we may come to believe that we live
better lives than we do.¶ My strong belief is that most of us live lives worth living. However, I do believe
that our lives are close to the point where they stop being worth living. But then it is at least not very farfetched to think that they may be worth not living, after all. My assessment may be too optimistic.¶ Let us
just for the sake of the argument assume that our lives are not worth living, and let us accept that, if
this is so, we should all kill ourselves. As I noted above, this does not answer the question what we
should do, each one of us. My conjecture is that we should not commit suicide. The explanation is
simple. If I kill myself, many people will suffer. Here is a rough explanation of how this will happen: ¶ ...
suicide “survivors” confront a complex array of feelings. Various forms of guilt are quite common, such as
that arising from (a) the belief that one contributed to the suicidal person's anguish, or (b) the failure to
recognize that anguish, or (c) the inability to prevent the suicidal act itself. Suicide also leads to rage,
loneliness, and awareness of vulnerability in those left behind. Indeed, the sense that suicide is an
essentially selfish act dominates many popular perceptions of suicide. ¶ The fact that all our lives lack
meaning, if they do, does not mean that others will follow my example. They will go on with their lives
and their false expectations — at least for a while devastated because of my suicide. But then I have an
obligation, for their sake, to go on with my life. It is highly likely that, by committing suicide, I create more
suffering (in their lives) than I avoid (in my life).
21
War on Drugs Negative
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
Extensions: Utilitarianism
(___) Maximizing all lives possible is the only way affirm the quality and dignity of life
Cummiskey 1990 – Professor of Philosophy, Bates (David, Kantian Consequentialism, Ethics 100.3, p
601-2, p 606, jstor,)
We must not obscure the issue by characterizing this type of case as the sacrifice of individuals for some
abstract "social entity." It is not a question of some persons having to bear the cost for some elusive
"overall social good." Instead, the question is whether some persons must bear the inescapable cost for the
sake of other persons. Nozick, for example, argues that "to use a person in this way does not sufficiently
respect and take account of the fact that he is a separate person, that his is the only life he has."30 Why,
however, is this not equally true of all those that we do not save through our failure to act? By emphasizing
solely the one who must bear the cost if we act, one fails to sufficiently respect and take account of the
many other separate persons, each with only one life, who will bear the cost of our inaction. In such a
situation, what would a conscientious Kantian agent, an agent motivated by the unconditional value of
rational beings, choose? We have a duty to promote the conditions necessary for the existence of
rational beings, but both choosing to act and choosing not to act will cost the life of a rational being. Since
the basis of Kant's principle is "rational nature exists as an end-in-itself' (GMM, p. 429), the reasonable
solution to such a dilemma involves promoting, insofar as one can, the conditions necessary for rational
beings. If I sacrifice some for the sake of other rational beings, I do not use them arbitrarily and I do
not deny the unconditional value of rational beings. Persons may have "dignity, an unconditional and
incomparable value" that transcends any market value (GMM, p. 436), but, as rational beings, persons also
have a fundamental equality which dictates that some must sometimes give way for the sake of others.
The formula of the end-in-itself thus does not support the view that we may never force another to bear
some cost in order to benefit others. If one focuses on the equal value of all rational beings, then equal
consideration dictates that one sacrifice some to save many. [continues] According to Kant, the
objective end of moral action is the existence of rational beings. Respect for rational beings requires that,
in deciding what to do, one give appropriate practical consideration to the unconditional value of
rational beings and to the conditional value of happiness. Since agent-centered constraints require a nonvalue-based rationale, the most natural interpretation of the demand that one give equal respect to all
rational beings lead to a consequentialist normative theory. We have seen that there is no sound Kantian
reason for abandoning this natural consequentialist interpretation. In particular, a consequentialist
interpretation does not require sacrifices which a Kantian ought to consider unreasonable, and it does not
involve doing evil so that good may come of it. It simply requires an uncompromising commitment to
the equal value and equal claims of all rational beings and a recognition that, in the moral
consideration of conduct, one's own subjective concerns do not have overriding importance.
22
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Counterplan
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
1NC Decriminalization Counterplan (1NC) (JV & V)
1. Text: The 50 states and all relevant territories will decriminalize marijuana, cocaine, and
heroin; and eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing for drug-related offenses. Current
convictions will be overturned and records expunged.
2. States decriminalizing hard drugs is the best strategy – it eliminates the worst harms of the
war on drugs by preventing policing from law enforcement but still keeps illegal on the
federal level so the government can prosecute cartels and prevent organized crime.
Morris, professor of Law and Criminology, 2007 Norval, Julius Kreeger Professor of Law and Criminology, Emeritus, The University of Chicago Law
School, “DRUGS: TEENAGE VIOLENCE AND DRUG USE,” 31 Val. U.L. Rev. 547, Lexis
There is no quick and obvious path leading to a working regulatory system backed up by the criminal
law aiming at minimizing the harm done by drugs. Prudence dictates that we should move ahead
gradually, rectifying our likely mistakes, building on our hope for successes.¶ For these prudential reasons, it seems to me
that the only hope of exorcising the demon of drugs and eliminating our present unprincipled policy is a
course of minor changes towards rationality. To name a few: no mandatory minimum sentences; no
protracted imprisonment for drug distribution¶ [*548] ¶ of anyone other than those elusive "drug kingpins" we rarely apprehend; no imprisonment for possessing drugs unless the amount possessed clearly
indicates a substantial business investment directed towards sales; drug treatment available for all
addicts, including residential treatment (and such treatment should certainly be compulsory in many cases, and backed by the
threat and sometimes reality of imprisonment); no incarceration for a dirty urine when under
treatment (only if repeated tests reveal rejection of treatment should this follow); and so on and so on. The prudential path is not one of a mindless liberality;
rather it is one of a growing movement to treat drugs and addiction with less moral fervor and more rationality.¶ Most of my work nowadays
relates to prisons and jails. Currently there are 2.1 million, mostly fellow citizens, in our prisons, jails
and institutions for juvenile offenders; the figures being prison over 1.1 million; jail over half a
million; and institutions for juveniles also more than half a million. These are enormously large
numbers, grossly higher both absolutely and in terms of a percentage of population than any other
country with which we would like to compare ourselves, particularly when it be remembered that our crime statistics are quite
ordinary when compared with those of Western European countries, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Only in homicides and crimes of serious personal
Roughly a
quarter of those in prison, in my view, should not be there they are there for low level crimes of
consumption or distribution of drugs. I have in mind, therefore, about half a million unfairly and unwisely
incarcerated individuals.
violence do we lead the pack and lead it far ahead we do and those crimes produce, of course, only a small proportion of the incarcerated.
23
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Counterplan
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
CP Solvency Extension – Policing (JV & V)
(___)
(___) Decriminalization is a useful strategy to stop the imprisonment of people of color
Morris, professor of Law and Criminology, 2007 Norval, Julius Kreeger Professor of Law and
Criminology, Emeritus, The University of Chicago Law School, “DRUGS: TEENAGE VIOLENCE AND
DRUG USE,” 31 Val. U.L. Rev. 547, Lexis
As George Bernard Shaw affirmed, it is one mark of a sensitive mind that it can be moved by statistics.¶ I
recently worked as a Special Master for a federal court for three years in Stateville prison in Illinois, a
maximum security institution mainly serving Chicago. Prisoners and guards agreed on the ready
availability of drugs, and this reality was regularly demonstrated to me in a variety of ways. The same is
true of all the larger state maximum security prisons. Our prisons are not "drug free"; it is likely,
therefore, that prohibitory deterrent laws will not result in a drug free society at large.¶ I recently
wrote a satirical piece in the op-ed pages of the Chicago Tribune urging the retention of our drug laws in
their present form since they provide the only remunerative training in entrepreneurship for minority
youth in our destroyed inner city. I further developed the theme that those who failed in this business
received further entrepreneurial training in the only truly free market in Illinois, that operating in Stateville
in which anything other than a gun is at a cost available. I added that our drug laws provide welfare for
the Drug Enforcement Agency and a wide variety of police enforcers, and I should have¶ [*549] ¶
noted that they also serve as a useful cloak for much of our foreign policy, given the link we have
established between certification of drug collaboration with us and a country's receipt of foreign aid funds.¶
Each year nicotine kills some 300,000; alcohol kills at least 30,000; the other drugs kill fewer than 3000.
And nicotine and alcohol far outdistance the other drugs in the social suffering they inflict on others who do
not use them. My epiphany on this matter came a few years ago at a three- day conference I chaired in
Bellagio, beside Lake Como, in Northern Italy. (The character of academics is strengthened by this type of
suffering). It was a well-planned conference drawing together fourteen countries to consider their
domestic drug policies. Papers had been circulated by scholars in each country on their country's policies.
Then the conference was convened of participants at subcabinet level from each country. The United States
was represented by the deputy to our Drug Czar, and by the head of the White House Office of Drug
Policy. One conclusion of the conference, published in its report, stays steady in my mind. It is at a level
of policy that the United States stands apart from all the other industrialized countries: they favor a
principle of harm reduction; they hope to minimize the injury that drugs do to the individual and to
society; they do not, as we do, embrace a policy that hopes to make their county drug free; they do not
rely on the criminal law as the first line of defense. And they certainly do not devote funds outside
their borders seeking to influence policies and practices in other countries.¶ Putting these differences in
practical terms reveals the key to what we should be doing.
24
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Counterplan
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
CP Solvency Extension – Policing (JV & V)
(___) Decriminalizing removes criminal penalties and prevents policing of people for lowlevel crimes but still allows the government to combat cartels
Blumenson and Nielson, professors of law, 2009 (Eric – Professor of Law, Suffolk University; J.D.
Harvard Law School, and Eva – Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Boston University; J.D., University of
Virginia, “NO RATIONAL BASIS: THE PRAGMATIC CASE FOR MARIJUANA LAW REFORM”,
2009, 17 Va. J. Soc. Pol'y & L. 43, lexis)
What is needed most, of course, is a sea change in marijuana law, not least in order to end the
destructiveness of present policy. There should be major government-funded efforts to devise the most
promising alternative legal regime. Our aim in this article is to underscore the need for policy reform, not to
argue for a particular policy. But we do want to offer a few provisional thoughts on three possibilities, any
one of which would constitute a vast improvement on present policy. The first is the one that currently
exists in parts of the United States: decriminalization of use and possession. Decriminalization does not
end the ban on use or sale of marijuana, but does remove criminal penalties for individuals found
possessing a small amount. Decriminalization was a successful reform strategy in the 1970s but its
momentum ran out soon after. Several states decriminalized possession of small quantities of marijuana
in the 1970s, after President Nixon's commission on marijuana recommended it as national policy. n118
These laws, for the most part, remain in effect and take several forms. n119 [*74] Other states have
stopped short of decriminalization, but offered ways to avoid a criminal record, for example by
deferring a first offender's prosecution for a period of time and then dismissing the charge if there
has been no arrest in the interim. Decriminalization has four important factors in its favor: (1) it puts
an end to the worst excesses of current marijuana policy (including arrest, imprisonment, and the
deleterious effect on law enforcement practices we have discussed); (2) studies show that
decriminalization does not increase the number of marijuana users; n120 (3) it is arguably more
consistent with international drug treaty obligations than legalization, n121 and (4) it may again have
a possibility of success, at least [*75] more so than any alternatives. As noted, Rep. Barney Frank last
year filed a decriminalization bill for the first time in Congress, saying that after decades of belief in
its merits, he now thinks public opinion supports it as well. n122 Recent polls show more popular
support for marijuana decriminalization than any time in the last three decades. n123
Decriminalization retains many of the drawbacks of present policy, however, while jettisoning the
worst. It still leaves marijuana production and sale to a black market populated by criminals, and eliminates
any [*76] government control over the drug or its market. And although removing criminal penalties
would liberate marijuana users from the virtually total loss of liberty that may be imposed under
current law, preventing use of the substance raises separate liberty concerns we address elsewhere. n124
25
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Counterplan
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
CP Solvency Extension – Policing (JV & V)
(___) The criminalization of hard drugs reduces the incarceration by nearly 400,00
Bunker and Bergert 2010, (Robert J. Bunker, Counter-OPFOR Corporation, Claremont, CA, and Matt
Begert, National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center (NLECTC) – West, El Segundo,
CA, Counter-demand approaches to narcotics trafficking, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 21:1, 12 March 2010,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09592310903561700) TP
Prison population increase arguments in support of left of center approaches highlight the fact that:¶ .
Drug offenders, up 37%, represented the largest source of jail population growth between 1996 and
2002.¶ . More than two-thirds of the growth in inmates held in local jails for drug law violations was due to
an increase in persons charged with drug trafficking. . In 2000, an estimated 57% of Federal inmates and
21% of State inmates were serving a sentence for a drug offense . . .¶ . [B]etween 1990 to 2000.... drug
offenders accounted for 59% of the growth in Federal prisons.29¶ This is representative of US policies that
have resulted in it having more individuals incarcerated than any other country in the world. According to
US Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, ‘at year end 2007, the total incarcerated population
reached 2,413,112 inmates’ for all US territories and possessions.30 Based on an analysis derived from this
data, the underlying report, and their own statistics, Stopthedrugwar.org states that:¶ Drug offenders made
up 19.5% of all people doing time in the states, or roughly 400,000 people. In the federal system, drug
offenders account for well over half of the 200,000 prisoners (those numbers are not included in this
report), bringing the total number of people sacrificed at the altar of the drug war to more than half a
million.31
26
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Counterplan
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
CP Solvency Extensions – Challenges Institutional Racism (JV&V)
(___)
(___) Decriminalization stops incarceration and is a useful tool to challenge institutional
racism and white supremacy
Wallis PhD in Political Science, 2011 Victor, Ph.D. in Political Science, Columbia University, Liberal Arts Dept., Berkeley College of Music, Managing
Editor, JOURNAL OF THE RESEARCH GROUP ON SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY, “Mass Incarceration, Democracy, and Inclusion,” 3-14,
http://sdonline.org/43/mass-incarceration-democracy-and-inclusion/
A second, more short- to middle-range goal is the decriminalization of victimless offenses, such as
prostitution among consenting adults, homelessness, and, especially, recreational drug use. There are
nearly half a million people in prison or awaiting trial who are now or potentially about to be
needlessly severed from the body politic solely for drug-related offenses (Mauer & Chesney-Lind 2002a: 6). There are
various arguments for drug legalization (see e.g. Husak & de Marneffe 2005: 3-105), but it takes little analysis to understand that the enormous
resources now used to police and incarcerate drug offenders could be more effectively and humanely
directed into providing the social services that, first, enable individuals to fight drug addiction (where treatment is needed at all) and, second, meet
their basic human needs for housing, employment, health care, education, and community, which would
help eradicate the oppressive social conditions that engender drug abuse. The current “war on drugs”
also serves a vital function in preserving white supremacy and class inequality (Chomsky 2003); drug
legalization, as an alternative to current practices, would therefore prevent the use of this tool to
further divide and depoliticize poor people and people of color.
Contemplating prison abolition at this time in the US, the international center of mass incarceration, is seemingly
utopian given that “It is as if prison were an inevitable fact of life, like birth and death” (Davis, 2003a, 15). It is essential, however, to
reflect on the fact that no system of punishment (least of all the grotesque deformity of mass incarceration) is natural,
normal, or eternal; rather, it is historically and societally specific (see Mathiesen 2000: 335-8; Rusche & Kirchheimer 2005;
Foucault 1997). At the close of the fundamental text on prison abolitionism, Instead of Prisons, this insight is invoked along with an invitation to reinvigorate the
criminological imagination of which Braithwaite spoke earlier. The book concludes: Prison,
we have been taught, is a necessary evil.
This is wrong. Prison is an artificial, human invention, not a fact of life; a throwback to primitive times, and a blot upon
the species. As such, it must be destroyed. What has been worthwhile in human history… has been the work of…
those who believed in the absurd, dared the impossible. Remember… that less than two hundred years ago,
slavery still was a fundamental institution, regarded as legitimate by church and state and accepted
by the vast majority of people, including, perhaps, most slaves… Like slavery, [prison] was imposed
on a class of people by those on top. Prisons will fall when their foundation is exposed and destroyed
by a movement surging from the bottom up (Critical Resistance 2005: 188). For those who seek to build a society of
democratic
<<<<Wallis Continues>>>
comprehensive structural equality, the emerging struggle against mass incarceration is
crucial. Few social movements today lie at the intersection of as many forms of oppression or have the
potential to expose and therefore potentially undermine the deep structural injustices based in the US
but benefiting capitalist, white supremacist interests on a global scale
inclusion and
27
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Counterplan
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
CP Solvency Extension – Mandatory Minimum Sentencing (JV & V)
(___)
(___) Eliminating mandatory minimum sentencing eliminates the worst effects of drug laws
by not disproportionately punishing repeat offenders
Morris, professor of Law and Criminology, 2007 Norval, Julius Kreeger Professor of Law and
Criminology, Emeritus, The University of Chicago Law School, “DRUGS: TEENAGE VIOLENCE AND
DRUG USE,” 31 Val. U.L. Rev. 547, Lexis
For these prudential reasons, it seems to me that the only hope of exorcising the demon of drugs and
eliminating our present unprincipled policy is a course of minor changes towards rationality. To name
a few: no mandatory minimum sentences; no protracted imprisonment for drug distribution¶ [*548] ¶
of anyone other than those elusive "drug king-pins" we rarely apprehend; no imprisonment for
possessing drugs unless the amount possessed clearly indicates a substantial business investment
directed towards sales; drug treatment available for all addicts, including residential treatment (and such
treatment should certainly be compulsory in many cases, and backed by the threat and sometimes reality of
imprisonment); no incarceration for a dirty urine when under treatment (only if repeated tests reveal
rejection of treatment should this follow); and so on and so on. The prudential path is not one of a mindless
liberality; rather it is one of a growing movement to treat drugs and addiction with less moral fervor and
more rationality.
28
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Counterplan
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
CP Answers to: Links to the Net Benefit (JV&V)
(___)
(___) The counterplan doesn’t link to the net benefit – decriminalization removes small-scale
policing by still allows the government to pursue large cartel operations.
Vox, 2015 “What’s the case for decriminalizing drugs” http://www.vox.com/cards/war-on-drugsmarijuana-cocaine-heroin-meth/drug-war-decriminalization-marijuana-cocaine-heroin-meth
Some drug policy reform advocates and experts, however, are critical of decriminalization without
the legalization of sales. Isaac Campos, a drug historian at the University of Cincinnati, argued that keeping
the drug market in criminal hands lets them maintain a huge source of revenue. "The black market might
even be fueled somewhat by the fact that people won't be arrested anymore, because maybe more people
will use," Campos said. "We don't know if that's the case, but it's possible." The concern for
decriminalization supporters is that letting businesses come in and sell drugs would lead to aggressive
marketing and advertising, similar to how the alcohol industry behaves today. This could lead to more drug
use, particularly among problem users who would likely make up most of the demand for drugs. The top 10
percent of alcohol drinkers, for example, account for more than half the alcohol consumed in any given year
in the US. Decriminalization, then, is a bit of a compromise in reforming the war on drugs. It would
reduce some of the incarceration caused by the drug war, but it would continue operations that seek
to reduce drug trafficking and hopefully make a drug habit less affordable and
accessible.criminalization-marijuana-cocaine-heroin
29
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Counterplan
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
CP Answers to: Permutation do both (JV & V)
(___)
(___) Decriminalization doesn’t displace the cartels because cartels because there is no other
competitive supply – instead we should focus on hardline efforts to combat them
Redmond, 10 Helen, journalist, “The political economy of Mexico's drug war,”
http://isreview.org/issue/90/political-economy-mexicos-drug-war,
In 2009, over the objection of the US, Mexico decriminalized the possession of small amounts of drugs. It
had no impact on the drug war. Decriminalization is illogical, making it legal to possess a certain quantity
of a drug but not to produce, sell, or transport it. Decriminalization leaves untouched the violence of
the drug cartels competing for la plaza, and the superprofits that illicit drugs generate that make it
worth murdering people to control market share. Furthermore, decriminalization continues to
stigmatize, criminalize, and incarcerate hundreds of thousands of workers in the drug trade—from
poppy and marijuana farmers, to drug mules who swallow condoms full of heroin, to smugglers crossing
borders. To end the death and destruction of the drug war, every facet of drug production has to be
legalized.
30
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Counterplan
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
CP Answers to: Permutation do both – Extensions (JV & V)
(___)
(___) Decriminalization allows a black market to be sustained
Sullum, 2008 a senior editor at Reason magazine and a nationally syndicated columnist, is the author of
"Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use.", “Prohibition didn't work then; it isn't working now,”
http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2008/04/america-on-drugs,
"Decriminalization" does not address any of these problems. As it's generally understood in this country,
decriminalization amounts to treating users leniently while continuing to arrest, prosecute and imprison
producers and sellers. In the states that have "decriminalized" marijuana, for example, possession of small quantities
for personal use is generally a citable offense punishable by a modest fine. That policy is certainly an improvement
over arresting pot smokers and putting them in jail, but it leaves the black market, with all its attendant
problems, in place. What we call decriminalization is not even as tolerant a policy as the U.S. had during alcohol
prohibition, when mere possession and consumption of alcoholic beverages, as opposed to manufacture and
distribution, were not subject to punishment at all.
31
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Counterplan
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
CP Answers to: Policing Continues (JV & V)
(___)
(___) Cops don’t want to arrest low level criminals if they don’t have to – Chicago proves
Dumke 2014 Mick, Chicago Reader, 4-7, http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/police-bust-blacks-potpossession-after-decriminalization/Content?oid=13004240
"This is a giant vicious circle," says the veteran. "Do I want to be stopping everybody in these
neighborhoods? Absolutely not. But the craziness almost dictates it." The officers say no tweaks to the
ticketing ordinance will solve the problems. The neighborhoods need economic alternatives to the
drug trade. And both officers count themselves among the growing number of people who believe the
government should oversee the cannabis business. "Take it out of the hands of the criminals," says the
veteran. He won't get an argument from Alderman Proco Joe Moreno (1st). "We all know the usage is pretty
much even among different ethnicities," he says. "It doesn't seem that the intent of the ordinance is being
acted out on the street." Like the officers, Moreno believes it's time to consider legalizing marijuana,
which he maintains is less harmful than alcohol (a position recently advocated by President Obama as well).
"I think there's broad public support for it," Moreno says. "The City Council gets a lot of criticism, but on a
number of issues we can move faster than the state or the federal government. It would be tough to pass, but
I'd be more than happy to lead that effort."
32
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Counterplan
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
CP Answers to: Federal Action Key (JV & V)
(___)
(___) State action is more important than federal action because state governments prosecute
almost 90% of drug crimes AND they cause changes in federal government policy
O’Hear, Professor at Marquette University, 2004 Michael, Marquette University Law School,
“Federalism and Drug Control,” Lexis, Vitz
At the same time, there
is good reason to believe that, on the whole, state policies cluster more closely around federal
norms than would be the case in the absence of federal inducements to conform. 332 If this proposition is true, then
the policy diversity that does exist might best be characterized as a "constrained diversity." What is the
evidence of constraint? First, consider historical trends in marijuana regulation. In the 1970s, when
decriminalization was taken seriously as a policy option by federal officials (and even publicly endorsed by President
Carter), eleven states did, in fact, decriminalize. Since the 1980s, when legalism triumphed in Washington
and federal policy turned decisively against marijuana, only one state has decriminalized and another
has actually recriminalized. 333 These developments occurred despite the absence of any clear
consensus that decriminalization was a failure in the states that adopted it
33
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Counterplan
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
CP Answers to: Increases Use (JV & V)
(___)
(___) Increased use from decriminalization is empirically denied – Portugal decriminalized
drugs and use is at a historic low
Duke, Yale professor of Law, 2009 professor of law at Yale (Steven, “Drugs: To Legalize or Not” Wall
Street Journal, 4/25, http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB124061360462654683)
A most impressive experiment has been underway in Portugal since 2001, when that country decriminalized
the possession and personal use of all psychotropic drugs. According to a study just published by the Cato
Institute, "judged by virtually every metric," the Portuguese decriminalization "has been a resounding
success." Contrary to the prognostications of prohibitionists, the numbers of Portuguese drug users has not
increased since decriminalization. Indeed, the percentage of the population who has ever used these
drugs is lower in Portugal than virtually anywhere else in the European Union and is far below the
percentage of users in the U.S.. One explanation for this startling fact is that decriminalization has both
freed up funds for drug treatment and, by lifting the threat of criminal charges, encouraged drug
abusers to seek that treatment.
(___) In fact, decriminalization actually decreases drug consumption by shifting
criminalization to a more public health model.
Greenwald, 10 Glenn, fomer columnist on civil liberties and US national security issues for the Guardian.
An ex-constitutional lawyer, “Drug Decriminalization Policy Pays Off,”
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/drug-decriminalization-policy-pays, Vitz
It may sound counterintuitive that decriminalization can improve drug problems. But Portuguese drug
officials, with a decade of experience with decriminalization, understand the reasons for that causal
relationship. First, when a government threatens to turn drug users into criminals, a wall of fear
divides officials and the citizenry and, thus, prevents effective treatment and education campaigns.
Portugal’s top drug official has said the stigma created by criminalizing drug use and the resulting fear
of government were the biggest barriers to effective education and treatment programs in the 1990s.
Second, treating drug addiction as a health issue, not a criminal offense, means the right solutions can
be found. Counseling is far more effective than prison in turning addicts into nonusers. Third, when a
government no longer spends inordinate amounts of money on arresting, prosecuting and
imprisoning drug users, that money can instead be used on highly effective treatment programs, as well
as services, like methadone clinics, to limit drug-related harms. Whatever one’s views on liberalizing drug
laws, our debate should be grounded in empirical evidence — not speculation and fear-mongering. As
California voters make a momentous decision on drug policy, Portugal’s decade of decriminalization
offers exactly the sort of rational examination that has been sorely lacking.
34
War on Drugs Negative
Reform Kritik
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
Drug Surveillance Reform Kritik 1NC (1/2) (V Only)
A. Link - The Affirmative’s attempt to curtail drug surveillance will only make things worse
for people of color. Ending the War on Drugs actually makes it harder for social movements
to fight the prison industrial complex by naturalizing certain forms of incarceration.
Forman, Professor of Law at Yale, 2012
(James Jr, Faculty Scholarship Series. Paper 3599. "RACIAL CRITIQUES OF MASS INCARCERATION: BEYOND THE NEW JIM CROW" April,
http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/3599)
In making this point, I do not mean to suggest that discrimination in the criminal justice system is no
longer a concern. There is overwhelming evidence that discriminatory practices in drug law enforcement contribute to racial disparities in arrests and
prosecutions, and even for violent offenses there remain unexplained disparities between arrest rates and incarceration rates. Instead, I make the
point to highlight the problem with framing mass incarceration as a new form of Jim Crow. Because
the analogy leads proponents to search for disparities in the criminal justice system that resemble
those of the Old Jim Crow, they confine their attention to cases where blacks are like whites in all
relevant respects, yet are treated worse by law. Such a search usefully exposes the abuses associated
with racial profiling and the drug war. But it does not lead to a comprehensive understanding of mass
incarceration. Does it matter that the Jim Crow analogy diverts our attention from violent crime and
the state’s response to it, if it gives us tools needed to criticize the War on Drugs? I think it does, because
contrary to the impression left by many of mass incarceration’s critics, the majority of America’s prisoners are not locked up for
drug offenses. Some facts worth considering: According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2006 there were 1.3 million prisoners in state prisons,
760,000 in local jails, and 190,000 in federal prisons.97 Among the state prisoners, 50% were serving time for violent offenses, 21% for property offenses, 20%
for drug offenses, and 8% for public order offenses.98 In jails, the split among the various categories was more equal, with roughly 25% of inmates being held for
each of the four main crime categories (violent, drug, property, and public order).99 Federal prisons are the only type of facility in which drug offenders constitute
a majority (52%) of prisoners, but federal prisons hold many fewer people overall. Considering
all forms of penal institutions
together, more prisoners are locked up for violent offenses than for any other type, and just under
25% (550,000) of our nation’s 2.3 million prisoners are drug offenders.101 This is still an extraordinary and appalling number. But even if every
single one of these drug offenders were released tomorrow, the United States would still have the
world’s largest prison system. Moreover, our prison system has grown so large in part because we
have changed our sentencing policies for all offenders, not just drug offenders. We divert fewer offenders than we
once did, send more of them to prison, and keep them in prison for much longer. An exclusive focus on the drug war misses this
larger point about sentencing choices.
35
War on Drugs Negative
Reform Kritik
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
Drug Surveillance Reform 1NC 2/2 (V Only)
B. Impact and Alternative – The War on Drugs is just a symptom of much larger problem.
Without a fundamental shift in public consciousness, the caste system will emerge in some
other form and reproduce their harms. Instead of investing our time and energy in
administrative tinkering and legal reforms, we should focus on changing America’s culture of
racism.
Alexander, Associate Professor of Law at Ohio State University, 2010
[Michelle, “New Jim Crow : Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” pp. 221-224]
King certainly appreciated the contributions of civil rights lawyers (he relied on them to get him out of jail), but he opposed the tendency of civil rights lawyers to
identify a handful of individuals who could make great plaintiffs in a court of law, then file isolated cases. He believed what was necessary was to mobilize
thousands to make their case in the court of public opinion. In his view, it
was a flawed public consensus— not merely flawed
policy— that was at the root of racial oppression. Today, no less than fifty years ago, a flawed public consensus lies
at the core of the prevailing caste system. When people think about crime, especially drug crime, they
do not think about suburban housewives violating laws regulating prescription drugs or white frat
boys using ecstasy. Drug crime in this country is understood to be black and brown, and it is because
drug crime is racially defined in the public consciousness that the electorate has not cared much what
happens to drug criminals— at least not the way they would have cared if the criminals were
understood to be white. It is this failure to care, really care across color lines, that lies at the core of this system of
control and every racial caste system that has existed in the United States or anywhere else in the
world. Those who believe that advocacy challenging mass incarceration can be successful without
overturning the public consensus that gave rise to it are engaging in fanciful thinking, a form of denial. Isolated
victories can be won— even a string of victories— but in the absence of a fundamental shift in public consciousness, the
system as a whole will remain intact. To the extent that major changes are achieved without a
complete shift, the system will rebound. The caste system will reemerge in a new form, just as convict
leasing replaced slavery, or it will be reborn, just as mass incarceration replaced Jim Crow.
Sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant make a similar point in their book Racial Formation in the United States. They attribute the
cyclical nature of racial progress to the “unstable equilibrium” that characterizes the United States’
racial order. Under “normal” conditions, they argue, state institutions are able to normalize the
organization and enforcement of the prevailing racial order, and the system functions relatively
automatically. Challenges to the racial order during these periods are easily marginalized or
suppressed, and the prevailing system of racial meanings, identity, and ideology seems “natural.” These
conditions clearly prevailed during slavery and Jim Crow.
36
War on Drugs Negative
Reform Kritik
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
K Ext - Answer to: Mass Incarceration Now (V)
[___]
[___] Ending the War on Drugs actually makes it harder to confront the racism at the heart of
the criminal justice system because the War on Drugs is THE ONLY EXISTING THREAT to
white middle class. This will zap the reform movement’s momentum.
Simon, Creator of The Wire, 2013
(David, Creator of HBO’s The Wire, The Audacity of Despair, “Lost in a symptom: The Nation on
marijuana reform,” 11-1, http://davidsimon.com/lost-in-a-symptom-the-nation-on-marijuana-reform/)
If white folk — and middle-class and affluent white folk at that — aren’t directly threatened by a policy
or program, the chance of getting them out in the street, or even actively engaging with the
government in any campaign for reform is minimized. So, too, with the drug war.
Mandatory minimum sentences and the elimination of federal parole, three-time-loser laws and draconian
sentencing matrices were all well and good when the presumed targets were the underclass, the feared drug
gangs of inner city America. Only in the past decade — as prison populations have soared,
methamphetamine has entrenched itself among whites in the American West, and the shrugging economy
has sent more and more of the white working-class and underclass to the corner — have white folk been
swept in greater numbers into the national dragnet, resulting in growing disenchantment with the drug war
across the racial spectrum. Yet even still, for many white families, marijuana remains the singular and most
obvious point of vulnerability to America’s obsession with drug prohibition. Eliminate the drug war’s
most fundamental perceived threat to the white middle class and the air is going to rush out of the
growing national opposition with the drug war so fast that our heads will spin.
Is that argument enough to eschew the very rational removal of marijuana enforcement from the drug war
arsenal? Maybe not. It’s hard to leave those absurd laws intact when an opportunity exists to mitigate the
damage done to those defendants — black and white — who are being prosecuted, however more modestly
than with prohibitions against harder drugs.
But the least that people of goodwill can do is to stop pretending that forward movement on
marijuana alone is anything less than an accommodation with an existing war of social control that is
being waged disproportionately on the urban poor and is utilizing the prohibitions against harder
drugs for the greater share of its incarcerative dynamic. Marijuana is not the core reason for our
crowded prisons, and the reform of marijuana laws is, at best, triage for a failed and dystopic system
that will be given another lease on life once the politically relevant portion of white America is given a
pass. Removing weed from the overall equation will, in the end, consign increasingly-isolated poor
people of color to the brutalities of the drug war for the foreseeable future. The game will still be the
game for them, and a cruel and rigged game it will remain.
37
War on Drugs Negative
Reform Kritik
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
K Ext - Answer to: Piece Meal Reforms needed (V)
[___]
[___] Crime policy reforms justified on the basis of fairness and justice have merely
modernized racial inequality—we need to question the ideology of incarceration
Murakawa , Associate Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, 2014
[Naomri, , “First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America.” ProQuest ebrary]
When Clinton New Democrats enacted legislation for community policing and death penalty expansion,
their “rightward” punitive policies reposed on justifications from liberalisms past. The rights-laden liberal
system secured the integrity of brutal, even lethal state violence, and the discourse of a community
engagement enabled more order-maintenance policing. Perhaps some liberal lawmakers hoped to cement
racial bias out of the machine. Perhaps others hoped to harden machinery to contain racial threat. In the
strategic ambiguities of policymaking, it is difficult to distinguish policies for racial fairness from
policies for racial discipline. I have argued that, in the logic of liberal law-and-order, this is a distinction
without a difference. If legitimate punishment means that the state surveils, confines, and kills with the
right techniques and protocols, then liberal law-and-order specified and refined quality administration
with the outcome of legitimating the carceral state. In the end, new administrative fixes made violence
appear less emotional and more rights-laden. In the end, the Big House may serve racial
conservatism, but it was built on the rock of racial liberalism. Liberal law-and-order promised to
deliver freedom from racial violence by way of the civil rights carceral state, with professionalized
police and prison guards less likely to provoke Watts and Attica. Despite all their differences, Truman’s first
essential right of 1947, Johnson’s police professionalization, Kennedy’s sentencing reform, and even
Biden’s death penalty proposals landed on a shared metric: criminal justice was racially fair to the extent
that it ushered each individual through an ordered, rights-laden machine. Routinized administration
of race-neutral laws would mean that racially disparate outcomes would be seen, if seen at all, as
individually particularized and thereby not racially motivated. Expunged from institutions and
abstracted from the material world, race did its damage in psychic territory. This summons Gunnar
Myrdal’s heavenly spirit of the American Creed, those virtuous commitments to liberty and democratic
egalitarianism that float above the hardware of the U.S. racial state. As original sin, white prejudice left its
mark in the form of black criminal propensities, making African Americans the embodiment of “a moral lag
in the development of the nation.” 6 In this sense, liberal law-and-order was especially powerful in
entrenching notions of black criminality. I say especially because liberal law-and-order maintained a
politics of pity that, through references to African American family deficits and at-risk youth,
softened the hard edges of conservatism and carceral neoliberalism.
38
War on Drugs Negative
Reform Kritik
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
K Ext - Answer to: Piece Meal Reforms needed (V)
[___] Tinkering with the machinery of mass surveillance does not produce a conversation
about what types of behavior deserve to be punished and who gets locked up.
Murakawa , Associate Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, 2014
[Naomri, , “First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America.” ProQuest ebrary]
Administrative tinkering does not confront the damning features of the American carceral state, its
scale and its racial concentration, which, when taken together reinforce and raise African American
vulnerability to premature death. By focusing on the intra-system problems of “discretion,”
lawmakers displaced questions of justice onto the more manageable, measurable issues of system
function. When framed as a problem of discretion— that is, individual decision making permissible by
formal rules— then solutions to racial inequality double back to individual administrators and their
institutional rules. In this sense, problematizing discretion forces questions of remediation onto
sanitary administrative grounds. Should judges be elected or appointed? Should judges administer
justice through sentencing guidelines? No guidelines and some mandatory minimums? No mandatory
minimums and only mandatory maximums? Will judges or parole boards select the final release
date? These questions matter, but they cannot replace clear commitments to racial justice. When they
are posed independently of normative goals, process becomes the proxy, not the path, to justice.
Without a normatively grounded understanding of racial violence, liberal reforms will do the
administrative shuffle.
39
War on Drugs Negative
Reform Kritik
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
K Ext - Answers to: public supports surv. – WoD (V)
(___)
(____) Civil society groups are shining light on the prison industrial complex – their
arguments are gaining traction with the public
Nathan Goodman 3/10/14 (The Weekly Abolitionist: Media Against The Prison State,
https://c4ss.org/content/25240,
State violence thrives in the dark. This is why the state secrets privilege is so abused, it’s why the Obama
administration has viciously persecuted whistleblowers, and it’s why states benefit from a media climate
where their legitimacy is assumed and radical ideas aren’t heard. So today I want to highlight some people
both inside and outside prisons who are shining light on the prison state. In Alabama, prisoners are
filming each other on smuggled cell phones to tell their stories and express grievances about human
rights abuses in Alabama prisons. These videos are then posted on a YouTube channel affiliated with
the Free Alabama Movement. As Bay Area Intifada explains, “the prisoners speak of deplorable
conditions, slave labor, prisons being a continuation of slavery and many candid stories from their
lives inside and outside the cement walls of Alabama’s prisons.” The very nature of the prisoners’ nonviolent disobedience tells us something about Alabama prisons. The communication mechanism they use to
engage in political speech, the cell phone, is prohibited by prison officials. Only by disobeying the prison’s
institutional rules can the truth about prisons be revealed. Prisons are designed to suppress communication,
dissent, and the accountability that might result from openness. The Free Alabama Movement deserves the
support of all who care about freedom and justice, and I’ll continue posting on their story in the coming
weeks. Outside of prison walls, I’ve been seeing prison abolitionist ideas in various media sources.
Anarchist journalist Charles Davis published an excellent article at Vice that discusses prison abolition
and interviews Isaac Ontiveros of Critical Resistance. The interview covers a lot of important questions
about prison abolition, including what to do about violent criminals, what tactics to use right now, and the
risks of reform. Critical Resistance is one of the most significant prison abolitionist groups in the world
today, and it’s always excellent to see their work highlighted at a popular website like Vice. My friend
Cory Massimo also recently published a guest post at The Stag Blog offering a libertarian case for
prison abolition. He argues for a system based purely on restitution rather than punishment, and contends
that prisons are the wrong response even to those who have violated the rights of others. I’m glad to see
prison abolitionist ideas gaining traction in libertarian circles, and I hope they will continue to gain
traction. Shining light on the prison state doesn’t just mean talking about prisons themselves. Prisons
are closely related to a variety of other political issues.
40
War on Drugs Negative
Reform Kritik
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
K Ext - Answers to: No Alternative to the WoD (V)
[___]
[___] There is growing momentum to rethink the racial bias at the heart of the criminal
justice system
DAVIS & GONZÁLEZ, World renowned activist and scholar and Co-host of Democracy
Now , 2014
(Juna & Angela, “Angela Davis on Prison Abolition, the War on Drugs and Why Social Movements
Shouldn’t Wait on Obama, 3-6,
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/3/6/angela_davis_on_prison_abolition_the#
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The struggle to overhaul the criminal justice system in the United States has
reached a pivotal moment. From the Obama administration’s push to reform harsh and racially
biased sentencing for drug offenses to the recent decision by New York state to reform its use of
solitary confinement, there is a growing momentum toward rethinking the system. But new battles
have also emerged, like the fight over Stand Your Ground laws in states like Florida, where a number of
recent court cases have highlighted the issue of racial bias in the court system. Marissa Alexander, an
African-American woman of color who fired what she says was a warning shot into a wall near her abusive
husband, is facing up to 60 years in prison at her retrial. Michael Dunn, who shot and killed an AfricanAmerican teenager in a dispute over loud music in the same state of Florida, is facing a minimum of 60
years for attempted murder, but the jury failed to convict him of the central charge in the case: the murder of
Jordan Davis, a case that, for many, recalled the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman.
AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about these issues, we spend the rest of the hour with the world-renowned
author, activist, scholar, Angela Davis, professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz. For
over four decades, she has been one of the most influential activists and intellectuals in the United States.
She’s speaking here in New York on Friday at the Beyond the Bars conference up at Columbia University.
It’s great to have you here, Angela. ANGELA DAVIS: Thank you, Amy. Thank you. Thank you, Juan.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you sense progress?
ANGELA DAVIS: Well, yes. I think that this is a pivotal moment. There are openings. And I think it’s
very important to point out that people have been struggling over these issues for years and for decades.
41
War on Drugs Negative
Reform Kritik
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
K Ext - Answers to: Ending the WoD is a 1st step (V)
[___]
[___] Temporary solutions like the Affirmative make it more difficult to have a national
conversation about the history of American racism.
Alexander, acclaimed civil rights lawyer, advocate, and legal scholar, 2014
(Michelle, Drug War Chronicle, "The New Jim Crow" Author Michelle Alexander Talks Race and Drug
War, Issue #825
If we're going to do this just to save some cash, we haven't woken up to the magnitude of the harm. If
we are not willing to have a searching conversation about how we got to this place, how we are able to
lock up millions of people, we will find ourselves either still having a slightly downsized mass
incarceration system or some new system of racial control because we will have not learned the core
lesson our racial history is trying to teach us. We have to learn to care for them, the Other, the ghetto
dwellers we demonize. Temporary, fleeting political alliances with politicians who may have no real
interest in communities of color is problematic. We need to stay focused on doing the right things for
the right reasons, and not count as victories battles won when the real lessons have not been learned.
[___] Band-Aid solutions like the Affirmative tell communities of color to “move on” while
white men get rich selling weed.
Alexander, acclaimed civil rights lawyer, advocate, and legal scholar, 2014
(Michelle, Drug War Chronicle, "The New Jim Crow" Author Michelle Alexander Talks Race and Drug
War, Issue #825
As we talk about legalization, we have to also be willing to talk about reparations for the war on
drugs, as in how do we repair the harm caused. With regard to Iraq, Colin Powell said "If you break
it, you own it," but we haven't learned that basic lesson from our own racial history. We set the slaves
free with nothing, and after Reconstruction, a new caste system arose, Jim Crow. A movement arose
and we stopped Jim Crow, but we got no reparations after the waging of a brutal war on poor
communities of color that decimated families and fanned the violence it was supposed to address. Do
we simply say "We're done now, let's move on" and white men can make money? This time, we have
to get it right; we have to tell the whole truth, we have to repair the harm done. It's not enough to just
stop. Enormous harm had been done; we have to repair those communities.
42
War on Drugs Negative
Reform Kritik
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
K Ext - Answers to: End WoD and do Alt (Perm) (V)
[___] Sequencing – We have to address America’s culture of racism, BEFORE we dismantle
the War on Drugs or we will reproduce mass incarceration.
Nakagawa, Lifelong political activist, community organizer, organization builder, 2012
(Scot, , RaceFiles, Legalizing Marijuana May Be A Good Idea, But It Is Not A Racial Justice Strategy, 1210, http://www.racefiles.com/2012/12/10/legalizing-marijuana-may-be-a-good-idea-but-it-is-not-a-racialjustice-strategy/)
Here’s why. The war on drugs is a war on people. It is not now nor has it ever been just about drug
enforcement. The war on drugs was declared under the Nixon administration and drug enforcement
expanded dramatically under the Reagan administration at a time when illegal drug use was dropping, and
before crack made it’s way into the public consciousness. The war is and always has been specifically
targeted at destabilizing Black communities, from its beginnings as a strategy to confound the Black
Power movement and other radical movements. African American men have ever since been filling up
our prisons, making the U.S. into the leading country on earth when it comes to incarcerating our own.
When crack hit the media, the war on drugs became part of the U.S. political culture, but the war didn’t
start in order to address the crack problem in the U.S. If it did, it would have targeted the largest
group of crack consumers who are white. Of course, nothing like that happened as is evidenced by the
grossly disproportionate rates of arrest and incarceration of African American men in particular. It is true
that African-Americans and Latinos are arrested for marijuana possession at rates wildly out of proportion
to their percentages in society, much less the rates of African American and Latino marijuana usage. But the
fact that Blacks and Latinos are disproportionately punished while federal data shows that whites are
more likely to use marijuana is just more evidence that the war on drugs isn’t about cracking down
on drugs as much as it is about cracking down on certain people. And the Black and Latino (and in
some states Native American) racial profile of drug prisoners isn’t just about where law enforcement is
active, as some have suggested, asserting that racial animus is less a factor than pressure to make arrest and
prosecution quotas. It’s also about plain, old fashioned racism. A 2002 University of Washington study of
Seattle law enforcement practices showed that it is anti-Black stereotypes, not location, public safety
priorities or citizen complaints that drives disproportionate targeting of Blacks in the war on drugs. And
there, at this site, they targeted far more Blacks than whites even though whites were just as visibly dealing
drugs. So before we celebrate the end of the war on drugs, let’s consider why it started. Given that
reason, we can hope that decriminalizing marijuana will cut down on drug arrests, but making it a
priority strategy toward ending mass incarceration of Blacks and Latinos is a mistake. Ending mass
incarceration will require us to address the racism that allowed our prisons to become warehouses for
men of color in the first place.
43
War on Drugs Negative
Reform Kritik
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
K Ext - Answers to: Reform Impact is Worth It (V)
Good intentions aren’t enough – reforms can actually make things worse. While it is
important to respect the perspective of people on the ground, it is just as important to make
sure we get things right
Goodman, Center for a Stateless Society, 2014
(Nathan, Center for a Stateless Society, STIGMERGY: THE C4SS BLOG, The Weekly Abolitionist:
Abolish Criminalization, Abolish the State, http://c4ss.org/content/25934)
These are important concerns. It is vital to remember that the prison system as we know it emerged out
of reform. For example, solitary confinement, a brutal method of control and psychological torture, was
initially developed by Quakers and intended as a humanitarian reform. The criminalization of blacks in
this country emerged from a loophole in the 13th Amendment, which said that slavery and
involuntary servitude were unlawful “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have
been duly convicted.” The reformist abolition of slavery was piecemeal, allowing the reestablishment
of slavery through the penal system.
To avoid these pitfalls, Deborah Small recommends a broader emphasis than simply ending mass
incarceration. Instead, she proposes a framework that emphasizes ending mass criminalization. She
explains the distinction as follows: Mass incarceration is one outcome of the culture of criminalization.
Criminalization includes the expansion of law enforcement and the surveillance state to a broad range of
activities and settings: zero tolerance policies in schools that steer children into the criminal justice system;
welfare policies that punish poor mothers and force them to work outside of the home; employment
practices that require workers to compromise their basic civil liberties as a prerequisite for a job;
immigration policies that stigmatize and humiliate people while making it difficult for them to access
essential services like health care and housing. These and similar practices too numerous to list fall under the
rubric of criminalization.
When people talk about mass incarceration they’re usually referring to the more than 2 million
Americans behind bars in local jails or state and federal prisons. That number, as high as it is,
obscures the fact that on any given day an additional 4 million people are under some form of
correctional supervision — generally, probation or parole. According to the Wall Street Journal, studies
reveal American men have a 52 percent likelihood of arrest over their lifetime — that’s basically a 50/50
chance. Either American men have an extraordinarily high rate of criminality or we’ve cast the police net
way too wide and caught way too many in it.
I’m inclined to agree with this. While prisons are particularly repugnant institutions, people will not be
free if they are released from prisons but then subjected to mass surveillance, police harassment,
invasive searches, prison-like schools, incarceration within “halfway houses,” stultifying state-secured
structural poverty, or other forms of systemic coercion and control. This why my abolitionism is
holistic. Rather than merely looking at the institutions of prisons, I look at the entire state apparatus and
social order.
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War on Drugs Negative
Reform Kritik
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
K Ext - Solvency Extension – State Cooption (V only)
Their strategy repeats past failures – liberal institutions will prevent solvency
Murakawa , Associate Professor Center for African American Studies at Princeton
University, 2014
[Naomri, , “First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America.” ProQuest ebrary]
The history of liberal law-and-order matters because the same proposals for better administration,
proffered with the same good intentions, are likely to reproduce the same monstrous outcomes in the
twenty-first century. The problems of a normatively untethered liberal law-and-order regime are
clear in the arc of liberal positions on judicial discretion. Mid-century liberals viewed discretion as
dangerous individualized justice, tailored to each defendant from each judge’s moral cloth in all its
idiosyncratic textures. Judicial discretion lurked in law’s “twilight zone,” dispensing what Judge Marvin
Frankel called “law without order.” Liberal fear of discretion endured through the mid-1980s, when one
could easily characterize the “mainstream liberal thought” as unambiguously opposed to discretionary
administrative interpretation and implementation. 15 With the rise of sentencing guidelines and mandatory
minimums through the 1980s and 1990s, however, liberals called for more judicial discretion by praising
that which they previously reprimanded— justice customized to each individual defendant. 16
As a project to control the irrationalities of racial bias and administrative discretion, liberal law-andorder ignored empirical lessons and displaced normative questions. Reformers invoked the promises
and perils of “discretion” while ignoring the central findings of research. The American Bar
Foundation’s 1957 survey and the myriad studies it inspired analyzed discretion within the “total criminal
justice system.” As a system, carceral machinery is not easily corrected by small administrative
adjustments: tighten discretion in one place, and the criminal justice system “accommodates,” to use
the original language of the ABF studies, so that discretion simply becomes more important for a
different decision maker. Accommodation is evident of sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimums,
which diminished judicial discretion but effectively increased prosecutorial discretion. When situated with a
total system approach, the “amount” of discretion has neither increased nor decreased, concludes Samuel
Walker; it has simply moved from one agency to another. 17
Administrative tinkering does not confront the damning features of the American carceral state, its
scale and its racial concentration, which, when taken together reinforce and raise African American
vulnerability to premature death. By focusing on the intra-system problems of “discretion,”
lawmakers displaced questions of justice onto the more manageable, measurable issues of system
function. When framed as a problem of discretion— that is, individual decision making permissible by
formal rules— then solutions to racial inequality double back to individual administrators and their
institutional rules. In this sense, problematizing discretion forces questions of remediation onto
sanitary administrative grounds. Should judges be elected or appointed? Should judges administer
justice through sentencing guidelines? No
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War on Drugs Negative
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{Murakawa Continues}
guidelines and some mandatory minimums? No mandatory minimums and only mandatory
maximums? Will judges or parole boards select the final release date? These questions matter, but
they cannot replace clear commitments to racial justice. When they are posed independently of
normative goals, process becomes the proxy, not the path, to justice. Without a normatively grounded
understanding of racial violence, liberal reforms will do the administrative shuffle. This book traced a
stark half-century turn from confronting white racial violence administered and enabled by carceral
apparatuses, to controlling black criminality through a procedurally fortified, race-neutral system. Race
liberals institutionalized the “right to safety” while skirting its animating call against state-sanctioned white
violence. Fixation on administrative minutiae distracted from the normative core of punishment in a
system of persistent racial hierarchy. Unlike administrative tinkering, reforms for decriminalization
and decarceration would push debates to their normative core: what warrants punishment, in what
form, and why? 18 In place of liberal searches for the ideal procedural path to life incarceration,
metrics of racial justice should focus on what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls “the state-sanctioned or
extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.” 19
Seeing racism as “group-differentiated vulnerabilities to premature death” gives proper context to acts of
violence between individuals. If we situate private violence in relation to group-differentiated reality, we
begin to see the tight weave of state and private racial violence. An example often mobilized to repressive
ends is the fact that most crimes occur within rather than between racial groups, such that African
Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans confront high incarceration rates and high victimization rates.
This is the complex story of the U.S. racial state, where normal institutional and ideological processes
perpetuate the multigenerational transmission of accumulated advantage and accumulated
disadvantage. 20 Accumulated advantage imparts a presumption of innocence; inherited wealth enables
home ownership in class-segregated areas (i.e., “a safe neighborhood”) and medical insurance for diagnosis
of conditions and coverage of various prescriptions such as Ritalin (i.e., more effective forms of meth). In
contrast, accumulated disadvantage imparts a presumption of guilt.
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War on Drugs Negative
Reform Kritik
SLUDL/NAUDL 2015-16
K Ext - Solvency Extension – State Cooption (V)
The codification of race within the law secured the subjugation of blacks which makes
emancipation impossible from within the state
Hartman 1997—Saidiya Hartman is a renowned author and a professor at Columbia University
specializing in African American literature and history, “Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and SelfMaking in Nineteenth-Century America” p. 194-195
The codification of race in the law secured the subjugation of blacks, regulated social interaction, and
prescribed the terms of interracial conduct and association, despite protestations to the contrary. As
the consequence of this codification of race, blackness became the primary badge of slavery because
of the burdens, disabilities, and assumptions of servitude abidingly associated with this racial
scripting of the body, and inversely, whiteness became “the most valuable sort of property” and the
“master-key that unlock[ed] the golden door of opportunity.” To be sure, the Louisiana statue did
impose the badges of slavery; it interfered with the personal liberty and full enjoyment of the entitlements of
freedom and regulated the civil rights common to all citizens on the basis of race, and it thereby placed
blacks in a condition of legal inferiority (563). The badges-of-slavery argument advanced by the attorneys
for Plessy and in the dissenting opinion of Judge John Marshall Harlan deconstructed the purported
neutrality of racial distinctions and, above all, held that racial classifications produced “caste-distinctions”
or a superior and inferior race among citizens. Indeed, the Louisiana statue placed blacks in a condition
of inferiority. However, it accomplished this not merely by the designation of a physical location, a
seat in a particular railroad car. In directing individuals to separate cars, the conductor, in effect,
assigned racial identity, a peril that did not go unmentioned by the Court and which was at the heart
of Plessy’s challenge. On what basis and with what authority could a conductor assign race? Was not such
assignment and assortment based on race a perpetuation of the essential features of slavery?
Moreover, what did I mean to assign race when race exceeded the realm of the visually verifiable?
Tourgee’s brief emphasized the instability of race and that the codification of race was purely in
service of white dominance. In considering why Homer Plessy should not be allowed to enjoy the
reputation of whiteness, Tourgee asked: “By what rule then shall any tribunal be guided in determining
racial character? It may be said that all those should be classed as colored in whom appears a visible
admixture of colored blood. By what law? With what justice? Why not count everyone as white in whom is
visible any trace of white blood? There is but one reason to wit, the domination of the white race.” Blood
functioned as the metaphysical title to racial property. Yet as there was no actual way to measure
blood, the tangled lines of genealogy and association—more accurately, the prohibition of association—
thus determined racial identity. If inheritance determined identity (and what could be more
appropriate than inheritance in naming the law’s production of racial subjects given the
transmutation of blood into property>), then it opened the golden door of opportunity for those able
to enjoy the reputation of whiteness and disenfranchised those unable to legally claim title to
whiteness.
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